Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

Biography

Edward Frederick Lindley Wood was born in 1881 at Powderham Castle in Devon, the fourth son of the 2nd Viscount Halifax; the early deaths of his three elder brothers made him heir to the family estates in Yorkshire. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first in modern history, he was a Fellow of All Souls from 1903 to 1910.

He entered the Commons as Conservative member for Ripon in 1910 and held junior and then cabinet office in the early 1920s, as under-secretary for the colonies, president of the Board of Education and minister of agriculture. Created Baron Irwin, he was Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931. His 1929 declaration promising India eventual dominion status angered the Tory right, and after the Salt March he negotiated the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931, which suspended civil disobedience and brought Congress to the Round Table Conference.

Back in Britain he became chancellor of Oxford University in 1933 and inherited the viscountcy in 1934. He served as war secretary, lord privy seal, lord president and leader of the House of Lords, met Hitler during a semi-official visit to Germany in 1937, and in February 1938 succeeded Anthony Eden as foreign secretary. He backed Chamberlain's appeasement through Munich but then moved toward deterrence, giving the guarantee to Poland in March 1939.

In May 1940 he was the leading candidate to succeed Chamberlain but stood aside for Churchill, and later that month lost the war cabinet argument over exploring peace terms through Italy. Churchill sent him to Washington as ambassador, where he served from December 1940 to 1946; he was made Earl of Halifax in 1944. He died at Garrowby in December 1959.